Mahjong in Saki
The mahjong in Saki is a Japanese variation of mahjong called riichi mahjong. The characters are in the 21st century in a world where the number of entrants in mahjong tournaments worldwide are a hundred million and growing. High school students in mahjong clubs compete for rank and for potential elevation to professional status for their members. Unlike the mahjong in Akagi, where corruption restricts the game's popularity, mahjong in the Sakiverse is a worldwide sport. In tournaments, the players compete in rooms separated from other players, the commentators, and the fans. Automatic mahjong tables are bathed in lights and several cameras record the action. Furthermore, the competition rooms are shielded from electromagnetic waves and suspicious items are examined by the referees. It's on this seemingly transparent stage where several high schools girls appear who seem to defy all common sense ... The Saki anime can be enjoyed without knowing much about mahjong. Paying close attention to the mahjong adds another layer of enjoyment. Knowing mahjong is more necessary when reading the Saki manga and Achiga-hen manga. The hand explanations section details some of the early games played in Saki and Saki Achiga-hen. The translator of the Saki anime used mahjong terminology found in the European Mahjong Association's riichi mahjong rules. Rules Setup Before each game begins, the players turn over wind tiles to determine the seating arrangement. When two hanchans are to be played, players also turn over wind tiles before the 2nd hanchan. Before each hand begins, the east seat player determines where the wall is broken by spinning the dice with the push of a button. The player breaking the wall turns over a dora indicator tile in the dead-wall and each player gets their thirteen tiles from the start of the wall. Play begins with the east seat player drawing a tile from the start of the wall. Reading a hand Players try to form four melds and one pair, with each meld consisting of three tiles, a complete hand contains fourteen tiles. The melds can be runs and/or triplets. A run is three tiles in a sequence in the same suit. Runs are easier to form than triplets. Alternatively, players can try to form seven pairs or the rare thirteen orphans hand. A hand that is one tile away from winning is in tenpai. A hand that is one tile away from tenpai is one shanten. A hand that is two tiles away from tenpai is two shanten, and so on. Players sense how likely they are to win a hand based on their initial shanten number. Players draw a tile from the start of the wall and then discard a tile. Play proceeds to the right. Game play Right after a player discards a tile, another player may take that tile by calling pon to form an open triplet, calling kan to form an open quad, or calling chii to form an open run. Chii can only be called for a tile discarded by the player on the left. To call kan, a player must have a hidden triplet in her hand. Called tiles are turned sideways to indicate who the tile was taken from. After the caller discards a tile, play continues to the caller's right -- making it possible to skip another player's turn while at the same time shifting who draws the next tile from the start of the wall. After drawing a tile from the wall or the dead-wall, players may declare kan. If they have an open triplet and have the fourth matching tile, they may declare kan to form an open quad. If they have a hidden quad, they may declare kan to form a closed quad. When a player declares or calls kan, she turns over an additional dora indicator tile and draws a replacement tile from the dead-wall. Also, a tile is shifted from the end of the wall to the dead-wall. In terms of forming a complete hand, quads are treated like triplets. A player with a hand in tenpai has the additional options of declaring riichi and of winning off of another player's just discarded tile (to ron). Any opponent can be ron'd, including to form a run or even a pair. The priority for taking another player's tile is ron > pon/kan > chii. Players may declare riichi when they are in tenpai and they haven't called any tiles. They turn their discarded tile sideways and place a 1,000 points stick riichi bet on the table. Players in riichi can't change their hands, except in some cases to declare a kan, and thus must discard every drawn tile that doesn't win. Players who win while in riichi turn over the tile(s) under the dora indicator tile(s), revealing an additional ura-dora indicator tiles(s). Players who can complete a hand if they used one of their discarded tiles are furiten. Players who pass up on a ron, either by choice or because they wouldn't have a yaku, are furiten until they draw a tile. Players who are furiten can't ron. Winning from a self-drawn tile, including a kan replacement tile, is a tsumo win. To win a hand, besides forming a complete hand, players also need to have at least one yaku. Declaring a tsumo win or a ron is also called going mahjong. Scoring a hand All of the yaku and doras are added together to get the han value. Besides the red five doras, doras are the next tile(s) in the suit following the dora indicator tile(s). For the purpose of determining doras only, the sequence for wind tiles is east-south-west-north-east, for dragon tiles it's red-white-green-red, and for suited tiles it's nine-one. If the han value is less than five, the fu value may also need to be determined. The payment(s) to the owner of the winning hand are found by looking up the intersection of the han and fu values in the scoring tables. East seat players receive roughly 50% more points when winning than if they were not east seat. However, if an opponent tsumo wins, east seat players have to pay roughly 50% of the points instead of roughly 25% of the points. 300 additional points are collected from the losers for each counter on the table, split evenly in the case of a tsumo win. If no one wins the hand, it's a draw. Players who declare tenpai receive a total of 3,000 points from the other (no-ten) players, split evenly. Point sticks are exchanged and updated point totals are shown on the table. Game continuance If the east seat player doesn't win the hand, or if it's a drawn hand and the east seat player didn't declare tenpai, the player to the right becomes the new east seat player. If the east seat player wins the hand, she repeats as east seat, and places a counter on the table. Point sticks are used as counters. If it's a drawn hand, another counter is placed on the table, but responsibility for keeping track of counters may pass to a new east seat player. If the winner(s) of the hand are only non-east seat players, the counters are returned to the (old) east seat player. A prevalent wind round is complete when all four players have had a turn being east seat. Most games consist of two prevalent wind rounds and are called hanchans, with the first round being the east prevalent wind round and the second round being the south prevalent wind round. At the beginning of the second round, the initial east seat player turns the prevalent wind marker over to indicate it's the south round. East wind games consist only of the east round, except when none of the players reaches 30,000 points. In which case, play continues into the south round until someone reaches 30,000 points. Some of the tournament rules are: * Team matches consist of five players playing one or two hanchans each, with each team starting with 100,000 points. * Individual matches consist of either east wind or hanchan games, with each payers starting with 25,000 points. * Matches can end when someone goes below zero points. In casual play and in individual tournament matches, the winner of a game receives roughly 5,000 points from each of the other players. More specifically, the players with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th most points divide their points by 1,000, round it with 0.5 rounded down, and then subtract 30 to get their +/- score. The total +/- score of these players is negated to arrive at the winner's +/- score. For Saki to score +/-0 while starting with 25,000 points, she needs to not finish with the most points and she needs to get 4,600 through 5,500 more points to get to 29,600 through 30,500 points. The Mahjong in Saki, part 2 page contains more detailed rules and explanations. Hand explanations Breaking even three consecutive times During Saki's first visit to the Kiyosumi mahjong club, Hisa notices that Saki is close to a tanyao, pinfu, and sanshoku doujun hand that is worth at least 7,700 points. After noticing in the computer records that Saki got +/-0 in both of the games so far, Hisa is surprised to hear Saki declare a win for only 1,000 points. She then sees that Saki must have drawn the nine of characters tile and discarded the six of characters tile. Saki then won off of a two of pins tile that was discarded by Kyoutaro. When Saki discarded the six instead of the nine of characters (9c) tile, she lost tanyao and sanshoku doujun, leaving herself with only pinfu. Hisa believes that the 9c wasn't a risky tile to discard and is confused by Saki's play. When Hisa hears that it was the final hand and that Saki once again got +/-0, she figures out that Saki wasn't aiming to win the game, but that she was aiming to break even for the third consecutive time and succeeded at such an incredible feat. The table state shows that the 9c is a live tile, however, there's little to indicate that another player is close to winning. So while the 9c tile is a mildly risky discard, there's little to indicate that it's much riskier than the 6c tile, certainly not enough to justify Saki dumping the value of her hand so much. That is even more true since it was the last hand and Saki needed a lot more points in order to win. Nor did discarding the 6c tile improve Saki's chances of completing her hand, which remained about the same. The choices that Saki made makes it clear that she wasn't aiming to win. 2 han 70 fu needs 5100 to 6000, tenpai, worth 5200 if won by ron, passes on yuuki's 5p due to short game low point spread giving her the winner bonus, passes on nodoka's red 5p due to dora and possibly temporarily furiten, nodoka riichi's, options reduced and the remaining option is difficult ... Practice You can practice these basic rules against three computer players at the following site. Everything is automatically taken care of for you except that you need to have a yaku in order to win a hand. http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/mahjong/mahjong_e.html Category:Content Category:Mahjong